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Tiny Brain Tumors

This green mass is a tiny human brain tumor growing inside a slice of rat brain cells. Duke Neurobiologist Donald Lo and UNC cancer researcher Albert Baldwin developed these lab-bred tumors to study the most common, deadly and treatment-resistant form of brain cancer, glioblastoma. Each type of glioblastoma tumor cell responds differently to drugs and radiation therapy, making the cancer as a whole nearly impossible to treat. Lo and Baldwin hope to use these cultivated tumors to study how individual cell types respond to drugs and chemotherapy, and to test the effects of new and investigational cancer therapies. (Credit: Bijal Shah and Linda Kaltenbach.)